For the final interview, they have her build a time machine. The target demographic, the panel states, is Floridian retirees.They mention that for 72% of the users, it’ll be their first time outside the States.

“You could market it as easier than getting a passport,” she says. 

They write that down, a good early sign. Buoyed and confident, two things she does not often feel pushing against her chest bone, she moves into evaluating and mitigating risk. Not first principles, but anyway, it doesn’t matter because she can tell by the gelées and the over-moussed hair, they’re the type to ship first and then ship again.

“What’s an acceptable loss rate?” she asks. Corporate-speak for body count. 

The pause is heavy on video.

“As close to zero as possible, but we’re realistic.” 

Directionally more open to a few deaths here and there, she decides.

“If we want to avoid losing folks, we could prevent users from going to certain places and times? Have a retrieval team on call?”

A question of scale, expense.

“It’s your time machine,” they say, not a good tell, not the type to lean into collective decision-making, so she verbalizes a path forward instead. 

“We’ll want to avoid any times of natural disasters and war. Human rights abuse. Minneapolis in 2025. Otherwise, liability goes through the roof.” 

“Oh,” one of the panelists shifts at that. “I don’t think we need to worry too much about all that, you know. Think of them as your grandma. Think about what she’d want.”

They are saying it without saying it out loud: that this product isn’t meant for everyone. That, until now, she’s never thought about how white time travel is, even though it doesn’t even exist yet, even though it’s all hypothetical. She remembers a talk she went to about building for the edges of a bell curve. That, when product managers consider the outskirts of a user base rather than the comfortable majority, they find more unique solutions.

Those type of product managers, the type she says she wants to be, do the hard part first.

But the people on the screen in front of her don’t give thoughtful activist but instead offer MBA grads that want an exit. And anyway, her monthly rent needs the job; she’s been out of work now for almost five months, and so, against her better judgment, against the image she curates of herself online, she walks it back. 

“I’m going to try something different,” she says and they lean forward, and she knows then what they want her to give them: time machine concierge with a touch of 50s nostalgia.

 “So, these retirees, when they cruise, are they Ritz Yacht Line or Carnival?” she asks. 

One of the founders offers a wolf-tooth smile and later, after she gets the job, during go-live, something like shame crawls across her skin, but it’s not enough to stop her because, for her, it’s already too late.